Socuellamos

So I have been here in Spain for well over three weeks now and...wow! What a whirl wind of experiences. Overall life is good but adjusting to the Spanish way of living I have to admit has been somewhat frusterating at times. As of now I am coping with a living situation that I do not necessarily love but will hopefully get better as it goes along and with the realization that eventually the novelty of my being new to the school is going to wear off and with it the childrens excitement for learning English may dissolve as well. For instance, today it seemed like there wasn´t a class that was interested in what we were teaching. It was so frusterating, everything that they had learned the week before had, by now completely left their little heads. My heart completely goes out to every teacher. How is it possible that you are able to motivate yourselves each day even when you know that your students do not at all feel the same enthusiasm???

On a lighter note, I went to Toledo last weekend! I met up with Claire and Lucas and we spent the day there. I had so much fun, but everyone told me that there are tons of hills there and they were comepletely honest in saying that! My legs hurt so bad the next day! But we got some amazing pictures and it was so nice to be with people from home. I spent the remainder of the weekend with Claire in her town. We went shopping, ate tapas and pizza, found Claire some eye candy ;), and bought scarves that we may never wear again when we get home! I was sad that KK didn´t come but hopefully we´ll all be able to get together again soon, maybe for Halloween. Which reminds me of another good thing; my "colegio" is going to have a series of Halloween parties (one for each class) starting tuesday of next week. I wont be there for all of the classes, but for a lot of them I will be. I am really excited and have been looking up different games and things for us to do!

Talked to Mom and Benny Boy Sunday which of course was nice. It was the first time I´d heard their voices since I left. Sounds like things are good at home and like Benjamin is loving having my car...lucky...here I ride a bus, a train, or try to find rides. I told Ben that I was thinking the whole time while in Toledo that he would LOVE that city! As you may know, it is famous for swords, which is something he really likes, and not just the classic kinds but new ones as well from movies and books.

This weekend I would like to go to Tomelloso (it´s a town like ten minutes away) and spend some time with the other auxiliares who live there and also bring my friend Laura (she is from Socuellamos and I think will become one of my closest friends here). I met them for the first time in person close to two weeks ago and really enjoyed being around them...So we´ll see. Claire has got me started noticing all the different things they say here, three that I really like are "nena" (which technically means baby but people say it to everyone like when something that stinks happens to you they´ll say "Ay, nena"), "Hombre" (in most cases is sort of like c´mon, but literally means man), and finally "Madre Mia"! So, until next time.